In recent years, a vehicle interior has been required to be more silent, and various kinds of means for suppressing wind noise from outside the vehicle, noise from tires, and the like coming inside the vehicle interior have been proposed. For example, a vehicle package tray, which is disposed on a back side of a rear seat in a vehicle, has been known. The vehicle package tray is one of interior parts in a vehicle, serves as a design for improving an appearance of the vehicle interior, and also functions as a place where an object is placed, or where vehicle accessories such as a speaker and a stop lamp are embedded. Furthermore, the vehicle package tray is configured as a wall which sections a trunk space and a vehicle interior space and thereby prevents noise from the outside of the vehicle interior from entering from the trunk space to the vehicle interior space.
Here, the vehicle package tray is required to have predetermined rigidity since an object is placed thereon or vehicle accessories such as a speaker and a stop lamp are embedded therein. A vehicle package tray which is formed of an injection-molded article of thermoplastic synthetic resin in order to obtain such rigidity has been generally known. In addition, a vehicle package tray, as a fiber-reinforced plastic article formed into a predetermined shape by thermal fusion bonding and compression molding by heating and pressurizing a base layer in which a fiber-reinforced material and thermoplastic synthesis fiber are mixed, has been also generally known.
However, both the vehicle package trays as the injection-molded article and as a fiber-reinforced plastic article have a problem that the weights thereof are heavy despite having rigidity. In addition, these vehicle package trays have a sound blocking performance for blocking noise from the trunk and do not substantially have a sound absorbing performance. Therefore, a sound absorbing material is attached to the surface of the vehicle package tray on the side of the trunk in order to add the sound absorbing performance, which results in a further increase in the weight, and there is a concern that manufacturing cost increases. In addition, there is a problem that it is difficult to perform an operation for embedding the vehicle accessories such as the speaker and the stop lamp (JP-A-7-89395, for example).
Thus, a vehicle package tray in JP-A-2006-15857 has been known in view of the above problems. The vehicle package tray is a vehicle package tray with a configuration in which a front surface material is attached to a hard urethane foam layer. The vehicle package tray has enough rigidity for placing an object thereon or embedding vehicle accessories therein by forming the hard urethane foam layer to obtain a predetermined plate thickness, and the vehicle package has the sound absorbing property by the configuration of the urethane foam layer.
However, the above vehicle package tray in JP-A-2006-15857 is configured such that desired rigidity for the vehicle package tray is covered only by hardness of the hard urethane foam layer. Here, the plate thickness of the hard urethane foam layer is set to 25 mm in a configuration with an increased plate thickness in JP-A-2006-15857. Here, it is not preferable to increase the plate thickness in view of vehicle design since the vehicle package tray is disposed in a limited space on a back side of a rear seat. In addition, there is also a concern that the weight of the vehicle package tray with the increased plate thickness becomes heavy as a result. In addition, there is a concern that it becomes difficult to perform molding into a three-dimensional shape when molding in a state where the plate thickness of the hard urethane foam layer is increased. Moreover, there is a concern that so-called airflow contamination remarkably appears on the surface of the front surface material due to airflow between the trunk space and the vehicle interior space only by the configuration in which the front surface material is attached to the hard urethane foam layer.
Thus, there has been a need for an improved vehicle package tray which is light, has rigidity for mounting an object thereon and embedding vehicle accessories therein, and having also a sound absorbing performance.